Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)
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Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)
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Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)
#2Expensive though.
Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)
#3Expensive though.
You know what’s expensive? Treating 100s of millions of people for pollution related illnesses.
Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)
#4Expensive though.
Nu-cu-lar is scary. And it's much cheaper to just tell the working class they can't heat/cool their homes any more, the little people have just got to stop using energy...
Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)
#5Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)
#6Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)
#7If humans were perfect then all problems are trivial. In cryptography there is the idea of misuse resistance, and the same line of thinking applies to other fields where things are expected to be used at scale. Wind and solar are pretty much idiot-proof, and their low density means that the risks are spread out also.
As someone who is in principle pro-nuclear but has been following the process of OL3, I am pretty pessimistic about current prospects of nuclear, especially in the timescales regarding climate change. Maybe nuclear will make a comeback once the now installed wind/solar plants reach end of life and need replacement, but before that it is just too slow and uncertain to be effective tool (with our current engineering/construction capability!) to combat climate change imho.
Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)
#8> But due to historical accidents, lack of imagination, government bungling and regulation, incompetent engineering and operation leading to a small number of highly-visible accidents, fear mongering by media and ignorant advocates of other technologies or abandonment of our energy-intensive modern civilisation, nuclear fission power never achieved the ambitious goals (“too cheap to meter”) it originally seemed to promise.
Perhaps that promise was empty?
Blaming government regulation is especially a red flag to me here. It didn't prevent aviation from proliferating, even though the laws are, to put it mildly, draconian. With all that it's the safest mode on transportation by a wide margin.
China is currently in the process of realizing nuclear power's potential and it appears that in terms of energy delivered it can't actually keep up with renewables - despite no systemic obstacles like in the west.
Eventually everyone is going to just build renewable capacity and storage because that's simply the fastest, cheapest way to get energy.
Developing countries especially have an interesting approach to renewables, because grids there are notoriously unreliable, so there's no expectation of having power 24/7. For this reason they opt for renewables instead of waiting for that nuclear power plant to happen.
Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)
#9Expensive though.
Solar panels are cheaper. They're also useless at night or in winter at higher latitude.
The question is not whether it's expensive, the question is whether it's worth the price.
Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)
#10> But due to historical accidents, lack of imagination, government bungling and regulation, incompetent engineering and operation leading to a small number of highly-visible accidents, fear mongering by media and ignorant advocates of other technologies or abandonment of our energy-intensive modern civilisation, nuclear fission power never achieved the ambitious goals (“too cheap to meter”) it originally seemed to pr…
> It didn't prevent aviation from proliferating
Planes still crash from time to time. The regulations on the aviation industry are the ant version of regulations compared to the elephants that the nuclear industry has to put up with. planes are only 600x safer than driving by death toll [0]. That would be a shut-the-industry-down safety stat for nuclear plants.
That is why people are pointing out the nuclear safety rules are stupid. There is no comparable regulation on any industry. If nuclear plants were regulated to airline safety levels I would just be saying "meh, too expensive" in HN debates on the subject. The fact that it is still in the running despite crazy regulatory requirements is why there is reason to think it'd be a new age of energy if the technology was regulated sensibly.
[0] https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics...